Publik-Forum
05/2018, p. 53
(click to enlarge)
Art with scanner: Still life up close
The pictures are reminiscent of Dutch still lifes from the 17th century: Fruits, vegetables, and even flowers glow in rich red, green, and yellow tones against a dark background. This similarity is intentional, and yet there is a crucial difference. What can now be seen in a remarkable exhibition in Berlin are scanographs: the artist Almut Ilsen has worked with a scanner on which she has arranged and scanned the fruits and flowers. The motifs are thus presented three-dimensionally, with enormous depth of field, flowers and fruits almost tangible. After her last much-visited exhibition "Vanitas", transience, in which withered flowers and leaves were on display, the artist has now turned to the theme of spring. She has deliberately chosen for the works fruits that do not conform to the EU standard, are afflicted with defects. She calls her exhibition "fragil.frugal," and that's how the scanographs appear: delicate and fine, simple yet opulent. A total of 35 works are on display at the EWA Women's Center, "First Female Awakening," in Prenzlauer Allee now through May 4. This center was co-founded in 1989 by Almut Ilsen, who was involved with the oppositional women for peace in the GDR. The chemist and librarian also made a name for herself as a photographer. She had to give that up after an eye operation. And came upon scanography, a still young art form. "I want to remind people of the beauty of life in a simple way," she says.
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